The Plus-One Agreement

by Charlotte Phillips

  * * *

  Emma gave her reflection one last glance in the steamy-edged mirror and paused to let her heart reconsider its decision to take a sprint. She knew she’d spent far too long rubbing in scented body lotion and blitzing body hair, telling herself it was because she wanted to make a good impression on Ernie’s family. For Adam. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Dan was on the other side of that door. He was fully rationalised. Whatever there was between them, it would always have terms. It would always be about work.

  But he could easily have refused to accompany her here. I mean, really, what was in it for him? She knew she’d annoyed him with the public break-up thing, but he had no real understanding of how things were with her parents—how the pursuit of an easy life had become the norm for her. It was her defence mechanism against the endless nagging, and that was what Dan had been. Her route to an easy life. Shame it had all been fictional.

  But still he was here.

  And now there was that tiny nagging voice, whispering that he might just have come to his senses since she’d broken the news that she was leaving. He might have suddenly realised she meant more to him than a handy work date. Could that be why he now wanted the arrangement to end, despite his reluctance to let it go at first? Perhaps this weekend could lead to something more than a platonic agreement between them.

  It was a stupid nagging voice. To listen to it, or even worse to act on it, would be to set herself up for humiliation. Was the Alistair debacle not enough evidence that she had warped judgement when it came to decoding male behaviour?

  The twisty lurch of disappointment in her stomach when she opened the bathroom door told her she’d been stupid to read anything into his presence here.

  He was still wearing the same jeans and T-shirt, he’d clearly made zero effort to unpack his minimal luggage, and worst of all he was leaning into his laptop where it stood open on the desk, surrounded by the usual scattering of work papers.

  Had she actually thought for a moment that his presence here might have anything to do with an increased regard for her? What a fool she was. Nothing had changed between them at all. She was imagining the whole damn thing just because he’d shown her some support. Clearly she was desperate for attention now Alistair had humiliated her.

  At best, Dan wanted to part on good terms—that was why he’d decided to accompany her to the wedding and help her out this last time. There was nothing more to it than that.

  Undoubtedly the fact that the hotel had complimentary Wi-Fi had made the decision a whole lot easier for him.

  * * *

  Dan stared at her as she stood in the doorway, the deliciously sensual scent of her body lotion mingling with steam, epically failing to register the look of resigned disapproval on her face because of her transformation from office starch.

  Her dark hair fell in damp tendrils, framing her heart-shaped face, and there was a pink hue to her usually pale skin. She was totally swamped by one of the enormous white his ’n’ hers hotel bathrobes, and his mind immediately insisted on debating what she might or might not be wearing underneath.

  He stared hard at the e-mail on his computer screen until his eyes watered, in the hope that his stupid body would realise that they might be sharing a bedroom and a bathroom but their interaction was limited to the professional—just the way it always was. For the third time he read it without taking a single word in.

  ‘You’re working,’ she said with ill-hidden disappointment. ‘Don’t you ever take a break?’

  He felt a surge of exasperation.

  ‘What else was I meant to do? Take a stroll round the grounds? Sit and watch the bathroom door? It’s just a couple of e-mails while I waited for you to be finished.’

  ‘Well, there’s no need to snap,’ she said, crossing the room to the bureau and squeezing a handful of her hair with the corner of a towel. ‘You could have gone first if you’d wanted to.’

  Oh, for Pete’s sake! He hadn’t counted on the inconvenient need to be constantly polite that their space-sharing had caused. Without the shared goal of sleeping together it boiled down to a you-go-first-no-you-I-insist awkwardness about using the facilities.

  With a monumental effort he curbed his irritation.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m just not really used to sharing my personal space, that’s all. I’m used to doing what I like whenever I want to.’

  She glanced at him and smiled.

  ‘That’s OK.’

  She began combing her long hair out, looking at her reflection in the mirror.

  ‘You have a different girlfriend every week,’ she said. ‘I’d have thought bedroom etiquette was your speciality.’

  He watched as she sprayed perfume on her neck and pulse points. The intense scent of it made his senses reel.

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘I don’t see how.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘There’s no give and take needed. They stay over and the next morning they leave. There’s no personal belongings cluttering up every surface.’ He glanced at the bed, currently festooned with her clothes. ‘There’s no pussyfooting around each other over who’s hogging the bathroom. It’s done and dusted, with minimal disruption.’

  And minimal emotional input. Which was exactly how he liked it.

  ‘You make it sound so romantic,’ she said sarcastically, dipping her finger in a pot of pink make-up and dabbing it gently over her mouth.

  His eyes seemed to be glued to the tiny movements and to the delicious pink sheen it gave her luscious lower lip. She didn’t notice, focusing on what she was doing in the mirror.

  ‘It isn’t meant to be romantic,’ he said. ‘It is what it is.’

  A temporary and very enjoyable diversion, with no lasting repercussions.

  ‘So it’s fine for them to stay over until you get what you want, and then they’re ejected from the premises at breakfast time? Is that it?’

  ‘You make it sound callous,’ he said, snapping his laptop shut and gathering up his work papers. ‘When actually it’s fun.’ She threw him a sceptical glance and he couldn’t resist adding, ‘Hot, steamy, no-holds-barred fun,’ just to see if he could make her blush again.

  ‘You have no scruples,’ she complained.

  He saw the flush of pink creep softly along her cheekbones, highlighting them prettily. Sparring with her was actually turning out to be enjoyable.

  ‘I don’t need scruples,’ he said. ‘We’re all adults. I never make any promises that I don’t keep. I’m honest with them about not wanting anything serious and they appreciate that.’

  ‘No, they don’t,’ she said. ‘They might say they’re fine with it, but in reality they’re hoping it will turn into more. It’s not the same for women. Sleeping with someone isn’t some throwaway thing. It’s a big deal—an emotional investment. And, anyway, if you always put those limits in place when you meet someone you’re cutting out the chance of ever having a proper relationship. You could meet the perfect person for you and she’d just slip through your fingers unnoticed.’ She fluttered her fingers in the air to press her point. ‘You’d never even know. You’ll be perpetually single.’

  ‘And that,’ he said, grabbing his bag and making for the bathroom, ‘is exactly the point.’

  He smiled at the roll of her eyes as he closed the door.

  * * *

  Emma didn’t usually go in for a second coat of mascara. Or a second squirt of perfume just to make sure it lasted the distance. But then she didn’t usually go in for room-sharing. She wished someone would tell her stupid pulse rate that it was supposed to be platonic.

  He had the speediest bathroom habits she’d ever come across, and as a result she was still balancing on one leg, one foot in her knickers and the other out, when the lock clicked and the bathroom
door opened. Heart thundering, she thanked her lucky stars that she’d decided to keep the bathrobe on while dressing, and covered her fluster by whipping her panties on at breakneck speed, clamping the robe around her and then giving him a manic grin that probably bordered on cheesy.

  Her entire consciousness immediately zeroed in on the fact that he had a fluffy white towel wrapped around his muscular hips and absolutely nothing else. The faint hint of a tan highlighted his broad chest and the most defined set of abs she’d ever seen outside a magazine. He rubbed a second towel over his hair, spiking it even beyond the usual.

  She forced her eyes away, snatched the bathrobe more tightly around her and crossed to the bed.

  ‘I think we should have a quick round-up of the ground rules for tonight,’ she said, flipping through some of the clothes laid out on the bed, not really seeing them, just aiming to look busy.

  ‘Did you just say “ground rules”?’

  She glanced up and had to consciously drag her eyes upwards from his drum-tight torso. His amused grin told her that unfortunately he’d clocked her doing it, so she pressed the platonic angle hard to show him that they might be sharing a hotel room but she had no romantic interest in him whatsoever. None. Zilch.

  ‘I did. We need to pull off being the perfect couple.’

  He let out an amused breath. ‘I think you can count on me to know how to do that,’ he said.

  She silently marvelled. He obviously thought a few posh dinners and hot sex was all it took.

  ‘This is a whole different ball game. When you’ve been my date before it’s mostly been an hour or two alone with my family in a restaurant. A trained chimp could probably pull that off. This is going to be a lot more full-on. The place is going to be stuffed with Ernie’s family. We need to make a good impression for Adam. We have to look totally together but in an über-normal way, so we can counteract my parents’ dysfunctional relationship.’

  He looked briefly skyward. One hand rested on the desk; the other was caught in his hair. By sheer will she didn’t look at the towel, held up only by a single fold. Instead she fixed her eyes on his face.

  ‘You’re over-analysing,’ he said. ‘Trust me on this.’

  He pulled a few items from his bag and headed back to the bathroom with them slung over his arm.

  ‘I know how to pull off loved-up,’ he called over his shoulder, with not a hint of trepidation at the evening ahead when she was a bag of nerves. ‘Just like you know how to pull off professional couple. Just leave it to me.’

  * * *

  A couple of hours’ work had certainly done the trick in terms of refocusing him. He’d fired off a ton of important e-mails, had a look through some figures, and if he needed any more of a distraction to stop his mind dredging up the past, looking at Emma as he emerged from the bathroom again was it.

  Fully dressed now, she was wearing her hair long again, this time brushed to one side, so it lay gleaming over one shoulder of the soft green maxi-dress she wore. Her newly applied perfume made his pulse jump and she wore more make-up than usual, highlighting her wide brown eyes and the delectable softness of her lips.

  Playing the part of boyfriend to that for the evening was hardly going to be a chore.

  He could tell she was nervous just by the way she was behaving. Give her a room full of professionals and she could network her way around it with the best of them, holding her own no matter who he introduced her to. But with the prospect of a weekend with her own family she was reduced to a quivering shadow of her work self.

  That very jumpiness seemed to heighten his awareness of her on some level, and it felt perfectly natural for him to lean in close to her on the way down the passage towards the stairs. He rested his hand lightly around her waist, conscious of her slenderness beneath the light flowing drape of her dress.

  * * *

  Emma was hotly aware of him next to her as he escorted her along the landing. As his arm curled around her waist she picked up the spicy scent of his aftershave on warm skin and her stomach gave a slow and far too delicious flip. Everything about him seemed to be overstepping the lines of her personal space in a way it never had before. The way he stood just a fraction closer to her than strictly necessary... The way he’d held her gaze a beat too long when he’d teased her about wanting ground rules.

  ‘Er...there’s no one actually here to see us,’ she pointed out, glancing down at his hand, now resting softly on her hip. She looked up at him questioningly.

  ‘Just getting into character,’ he said easily, not moving his hand.

  ‘I’m determined to inject a bit of tradition if it kills me, Donald,’ she heard suddenly.

  Her mother’s distinctive tones drifted down the corridor from behind them and she froze next to Dan. And then they were getting louder.

  ‘I think I’ll have a word with Ernie’s parents about top tables and speeches. It’s a family occasion. They’ll be expecting us to have some input.’

  Emma’s heart began to sink at the thought of her mother instigating a cosy chat about traditional wedding roles with Ernie’s clearly far more liberal parents and she stopped at the top of the stairs, intending to intercept her and suggest a new approach of just enjoying the celebrations without actually criticising any of them.

  The coherence of that thought dissolved into nothing as Dan suddenly curled his hand tighter around her waist and propelled her back against the nearest wall. Before she could so much as let out a squeak, he kissed her.

  SIX

  Nigh on eight months of conditioning herself that her attraction to him was just a stupid crush, and all it took to get every nerve-ending of attraction right back in action was one kiss. One kiss that made her toes curl and her stomach feel as if it might have turned into warm marshmallow.

  He caught her lower lip perfectly between his own lips and sucked gently on it, his hand sliding lower to cup the curve of her bottom. The smooth wood panelling of the wall pressed against her back. She could feel every hard, muscular contour of his body against hers, and sparks danced down her spine and pooled deliciously between her legs.

  Her eyes fluttered dreamily shut—and when she opened them she was staring right into the disapproving gaze of her mother, a vision in purple sequins, a few feet away over Dan’s shoulder.

  Reality clattered over her like a bucket of ice cubes and she wriggled away from him, the flat of her hand against the hardness of his chest, her heart racing. He made no effort to disengage whatsoever, so she added an extra pace’s worth of space between them herself.

  He was watching her steadily, the petrol-blue shirt he was wearing making his eyes seem darker than usual, a grin playing about his lips. Her heart raced as if she’d just sprinted up and down the creaky stairs a few dozen times.

  She tore her gaze away from his.

  ‘Mum!’ she gabbled.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ Her father leaned in to give her a kiss and shook Dan’s hand.

  Her mother glanced at him disapprovingly.

  ‘Really, Emma,’ she remarked. ‘A little class would be good. Anyone could walk along this corridor and how do you think it would look to find you two in a clinch?’ She radiated criticism, despite the fact that she was intending to steam in and openly re-evaluate the wedding plans. When it came to social etiquette she could be remarkably selective. ‘You’re not sixteen, you know. A little decorum would be good. Thank goodness Adam can rely on your father and me to make a good impression.’

  She swept past them down the stairs.

  Emma stared after her incredulously and then rounded on Dan.

  ‘What the hell was that about?’ she snapped. ‘What did you think you were doing?’

  ‘We’ve got an image to keep up,’ he said, shrugging as if he’d done nothing wrong.

  So he’d just been playing a par
t, while her knees had turned to jelly. There had been a moment back there when she’d thought she might simply fold into a hot puddle on the floor.

  But he didn’t need to know that, did he?

  ‘I don’t think we need to take things quite that far,’ she said, trying to breathe normally.

  ‘Are you complaining that my kisses are somehow substandard?’ he said, his gaze penetrating, a grin touching the edge of his mouth and crinkling his eyes.

  Her blush felt as if it spread all the way from the roots of her hair to her toes, because as kisses went it had been utterly off-the-scale sublime.

  ‘Of course I’m not saying that,’ she snapped. ‘It’s just that when I said we were aiming for perfect couple I obviously should have specified that I didn’t mean perfect couple at honeymoon stage.’

  ‘What were you aiming for, then?’ he said, blue eyes amused. He rubbed his lips thoughtfully with his fingers, as if he was savouring the taste of her.

  She ran a hand self-consciously over her hair. Perhaps if she could smooth the muss out of it she could smooth the fluster out of the rest of her.

  ‘I was thinking more comfortable in each other’s company. You know the kind of thing. More the on-the-brink-of-settling-down stage.’ She shrugged, her pulse returning to normal now. ‘Then again, you’re clearly drawing on your own experiences. When did you last have a relationship that made it past loved-up? You go from meet straight to dump. You miss out everything in between.’

  He laughed, clearly amused by the whole affair.

  ‘You gave it one hundred and ten per cent when you were staging our “break-up”,’ he pointed out, making sarcastic speech marks in the air with his fingers. ‘Right the way down to the spectacular drink-throwing. What’s the matter with that approach now?’

  She could hardly say it made her knees unreliable, could she?

  ‘Because the whole point of this is to stop my parents showing Adam up,’ she said. ‘And they’ve actually as good as just told us to get a room. I think we might have taken it a teensy bit too far.’

  She led the way down the stairs